10 Surprising Reasons Movie Scenes Were Ruined

Baz Luhrmann's 2013 adaptation of The Great Gatsby received mixed reviews upon release, though one of the more common complaints about the production was the high abundance of obvious ADR dubbing throughout.

A number of scenes feature distractingly wonky dubbing, and while ADR is extremely common in big-budget movies where on-set sound recording is challenging, due care evidently wasn't taken to sync up the filmed mouth movements with the post-recorded dialogue.

If you assumed this was down to a simple lack of effort on the part of the movie's sound team, that's really not true, because according to the film's supervising sound editor Wayne Pashley, post-production sound mixing on the film was unexpectedly challenging.

Pashley said that due to the noisy nature of the set, the film required thousands of lines of dialogue to be replaced during post-production, and a large percentage of these ended up being for Carey Mulligan's character Daisy Buchanan.

When Mulligan came in to re-record her lines, roughly 50% of her dialogue had been cued up for replacement due to the sound being inadequately recorded on-set, but Mulligan was unhappy with her original vocal performance and so requested that she re-dub her entire performance.

Mulligan was originally meant to spend eight hours recording ADR for the movie, but ended up spending three days re-recording her lines in a voice she felt was closer to F. Scott Fitzgerald's conception of Daisy in the book.

The problem, however, was that this had a knock-on effect for her co-stars. Pashley added that the comprehensive ADR for Mulligan's performance required them to bring in the actors she worked with to re-record many of their lines also, to ensure the "sound power" matched between the actors.

Evidently it was a tough spot for the sound mixing team to end up in, and they simply did the best they could with a chaotic, mega-budget shoot.